Portside

The latest round of violence in Jerusalem is reminiscent of the Second Intifada, sparked by then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Haram al-Sharif compound (Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount) in 2000. Last week's events come in the wake of other "structural forms of violence" directed at Jerusalem's Palestinian residents, and are evidence of the "alarming transformations taking place in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Kathryn Stinson, a South African epidemiologist, recently returned from fighting Ebola in Sierra Leone, travelled to Europe with Kaci Hickox, the American nurse later quarantined in a tent outside a New Jersey hospital. Stinson writes about the courage of health care workers there, her own 21 "post-mission" days, and the need to confront the "hysteria and stigma" surrounding returning staff from Ebola-affected areas with science and evidence-based insight.

The violent disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college in Guerrero state has caused a political earthquake the likes of which Mexico has not seen in generations — perhaps even since the revolution of 1910. That makes it all the more baffling how little attention most people in the U.S. have paid to the unfolding tragedy. Americans must face the fact that the drug-related corruption and violence in Mexico is a "binational affair."

Washington state's Attorney General Bob Ferguson intends to sue the U.S. government for not protecting workers involved in the decades-long cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a decommissioned nuclear site. Dozens of workers, including 44 in the last 12 months, have been sickened by toxic vapors while trying to clean up the site. "Hanford workers face a very real and immediate health risk," Ferguson said in announcing his intent to file the lawsuit.

More than 20 million people, and nearly one-third of all hourly employees over 18 make more than the existing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour but less than the $10.10 per hour increased federal minimum wage unsuccessfully promoted by the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats earlier this year. The Pew Research Center's Fact Tank provides a profile of where these "near-minimum-wage" workers work and what they are paid.

Legislation by Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn and the Illinois Legislature, would have made deep cuts to employees retirement benefits. The so-called "pension reform law" was ruled unconstitutional by a Illinois Circuit Judge today.

The Democratic establishment’s obsessive concern with winning over socially liberal affluent swing voters meant the party failed to run a populist national campaign on issues that would have appealed to working people of all races

It’s easy to see how evolution can account for the dark streaks in human nature—the violence, treachery, and cruelty. But how does it produce kindness, generosity, and heroism?

'The danger of oppression is not just being oppressed, it’s becoming an oppressor.'

“A lot of people are using the term bittersweet, but I don’t think that’s enough to describe the amount of emotion I’m feeling right now”